Alarmists
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Alarmists.—
It is odd to speculate on the reasons why people love to be frightened. The child, scarce out of the cradle, likes nothing so well as a ghost story, with its consequences of horrible dreams and terrors of the dark. The uneducated tenant of the shanty felt a melancholy pleasure in picturing the awful visitation of the dreaded comet; and no doubt half regrets that it didn’t come. Nor is the appetite for apprehension confined to youth, or to the uneducated. The New York papers live by creating false alarms, spreading panics, and inventing impending dangers and horrible probable catastrophes—by foreshadowing the evils of to-morrow, as much as by chronicling the horrors of yesterday. The Herald, which is the greatest adept in the art of drawing these fancy pictures, has the widest circulation of them all, proving how large is the demand for alarmist literature, and how well croaking pays, if it is only followed out consistently. The comet, as a subject of alarm, is “played out,” and besides, it never succeeded in alarming any body but the class who believe in fortune-telling. Some of the alarmists fell back on yellow fever; but the inquiries of Mayor Powell1 and Health-Officer Cleveland resolved the “dread scourge” into a case of sea-sickness. The alarmists then retreated on “the condition of the streets”—feeling convinced that if we haven’t the yellow fever yet, we shall surely have the cholera shortly. But our health is not more endangered than our wealth. Before the cholera carries us off bodily, every one in the West is going to bankrupt through excessive speculation, and every one in the East through fast living; crops are to fail there, banks are to shut here. And all who don’t perish by the cholera will assuredly perish in civil war, in the day when Governor King2 leads an army of stalwart farmers to New York to depose Mayor Wood,3 and disperse his famous body-guard. This will be near about the history of the next few weeks, as we gather it from the predictions of the “leading journals.”
Notes:
1. Samuel S. Powell (1815–1879) served as mayor of Brooklyn from 1857 to 1861, and then again from 1872 to 1873. In 1863, he was nominated to become water commissioner by a previous mayor of Brooklyn, Colonel Alfred M. Wood, but was denied confirmation by the Board of Aldermen. Thomas Jefferson Whitman mentioned Powell's nomination in a December 1863 letter to Walt. [back]
2. John A. King (1788–1867) served as the governor of New York from 1857 to 1858. He also owned and worked on a farm in the village of Jamaica, Long Island. Whitman briefly described seeing King and his family residence in "Letters from a Travelling Bachelor, Number IV" (New York Sunday Dispatch [November 4, 1849]). [back]
3. Fernando Wood (1812–1881), a Democrat, was mayor of New York City from 1855–1857 and 1860–1861. He was widely regarded as corrupt. During his time at the Brooklyn Daily Times, Whitman penned numerous fiery articles against "King Fernando." [back]